.WAF L ( l t u 2wQ~\`?O ntry (=nT`_/LiwQ~\`?O purl +http://publish.uwo.ca/~cantus/aboutca.html mime
text/html hntt "148a1b-1bfb-3e6dfa8f" hvrs data
CANTUS: About the Project
About CANTUS
Latin ecclesiastical chant is the traditional song of Catholic worship.
The texts are almost all in Latin, and the majority of them are drawn from
the Bible, most often the book of Psalms. There are thousands of individual
chants, and they came into existence over a long period, beginning in early
Christian times and continuing until as late as the 19th century. Virtually
all chants have clearly defined liturgical roles that associate them with
either the Mass or the Office, a series of worship services that take place
at intervals through the course of each day.
For the vast majority of chants, the date of composition is unknown, as
is the composer. But because ecclesiastical chant is the earliest musical
repertory of any significant size that has survived, and because chant melodies
are often incorporated into the sacred music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance,
scholars are deeply interested in learning all they can about it. In order
to do this they need to have authoritative versions of individual chants to
study and analyze, yet there is as yet no critical edition for them to use.
Thus they must go to individual manuscripts, compare the relationship of
the readings they contain to those of other sources, and try to arrive at
assessments of their value as witnesses to this important musical tradition.
CANTUS is a database intended to assist scholars in their study of the
chants of the Office. It is made up of indices of the chants in sources
of the liturgical Office. It uses as models two older kinds of indices--those
published in various facsimile editions of sources (for example, Paléographie
musicale), and those presented by Dom René-Jean Hesbert in Corpus Antiphonalium Officii [hence CAO].
In CANTUS, each chant contained in a particular source is represented
by one record. The fields employed in an 83-column
CANTUS record are as follows: folio number, liturgical occasion, text
incipit (limited to 29 characters), mode, differentia, CAO concordances
(letters representing the sources surveyed by Hesbert in CAO in which the
chant appears), CAO reference number, Office, genre, and liturgical position.
Chants that do not appear in CAO are included in such a way that they can
be extracted from the file and printed in a separate list.
In the 131-column format, there is a field
that provides an identifying number for each liturgical occasion and another
field that identifies the source (useful when indices are combined for sorting).
There is also a sequence number (a two-digit number that indicates the order
in which chants appear on the page or folio side), and two extra fields in
which additional information may be stored.
One need being addressed in this project is that for indices of sources
of the Office to supplement those that are already available; a CANTUS index
of a particular source will normally be used by a scholar who possesses a
microfilm of that source.
It should be remembered that the flexibility of a computerized index greatly
facilitates access to the information it contains. For example, one
can learn within seconds whether a source contains a particular chant, and
if so, exactly what its role is. One can also quickly locate the series
of chants for a certain liturgical occasion. In addition, lists of certain
types of chant can easily be prepared, such as an inventory of all the antiphons
assigned to the Magnificat of Vespers and the Benedictus of Lauds (those
normally indicated with the rubric "in evangelio").
Creating a tonary for an entire source, listing all the antiphons by mode
and differentia, is a relatively simple task if there is a CANTUS index for
it; antiphons assigned to a certain mode and differentia can be printed in
alphabetical order, or in liturgical order, or both. In addition, if
one wishes to examine the melodies provided for those responsory verses that
are not sung to the standard tones, finding them is a matter of just a few
key-strokes.
CANTUS also makes it easier for the scholar to draw on information carried
over from CAO. One can prepare a list of all of the chants included
in a CANTUS file that are also found in one or another of the sources indexed
by Hesbert. The advantages over print-based media are obvious.
CANTUS files may be examined online, or readers may download the files
for use on their own computers. When viewing the files online through
a web-browser, a monospaced font will ensure that the columns are aligned
properly. The "download" option allows for the extraction of a single
manuscript index from the CANTUS database. The downloadable files
are transferred in ASCII text (.txt)--this standard data format can
be imported by the user into any word-processing programme or database.
Both 83-column and 131-column versions of the indices are available.
Several of the CANTUS indices are available in book form ; each includes an introduction that
describes the manuscript and certain features of the chants it contains.
CANTUS Advisory Panel
Project Director: Terence Bailey , University of Western Ontario
Rebecca Baltzer , University of Texas
Margot Fassler , Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University
Barbara Haggh , University of Maryland
David G. Hughes, Harvard University (emeritus)
Alejandro E. Planchart , University of California, Santa Barbara
Alma Santosuosso , Wilfrid Laurier University
Ruth Steiner , Catholic University of America (Project Founder)
Tom R. Ward , University of Illinois
Back to CANTUS Home Page